The opposite of ‘sparkle’ is ‘darkle’

While most of us have seen things shimmer with light and described it as sparkling, there is an equal opposite to sparkle. The word, darkle, means to become cloudy, gloomy, dark, or be concealed in the dark!

Darkle word  originated in the 1800s, and it is believed that the original use of darkle was ‘darkling’.

(Source)

Australian crocodile Elvis steals lawnmower

An Australian crocodile reacted badly when a noisy lawnmower invaded his space - he stole it, forcing keepers to make a daring rescue.

Elvis, who lives at the Australian Reptile Park, lunged at the mower, grabbing it from operations manager Tim Faulkner and keeper Billy Collett.

Pulling it under water, the five-metre saltwater crocodile "drowned" the machine at the park near Sydney.

He then sat and watched his catch for more than an hour in his enclosure.

''Once he got it, he just sat there and guarded it,'' said Mr Faulkner. ''It was his prize, his trophy. If it moved, then he would attack it again.''

While the keeper lured Elvis to the other end of the enclosure with an offering of kangaroo meat, Mr Faulkner was able to jump in, retrieve the badly chewed up mower and two teeth that Elvis had lost in the process.

(Source)

Soap with caffeine

There is a caffeinated bar of soap that has the effect of one cup of coffee!

It is called Shower Shock. It's concentration of caffeine is so strong that it is the equivalent of drinking 1 cup of coffee per shower. This is because the caffeine is absorbed through your skin.

Shower Shock is an all-vegetable based glycerine soap, scented with peppermint oil and infused with caffeine anhydrous. Each bar of Shower shock contains approximately 12 servings/showers per 4 ounce bar with 200 milligrams of caffeine per serving.

(Source)

Shower system turned blond residents to have green hair

Source: Getty Images

Several blond residents of a southern Swedish town were left with green hair after an unusual reaction between the water supply and the shower system of a number of new homes.

Authorities began investigating when a number of inhabitants of Anderslov complained that their hair suddenly turned green. They tested the water supply in several homes to see if there was a high level of copper - known to turn hair green - but recorded only normal levels of the metal.

However, when hot water was left in the houses' water systems overnight, the amount of copper in it was found to increase to five or 10 times the normal amount.

Investigators concluded that the hot water must have peeled copper from the pipes and water heaters. The copper then was absorbed into the water, causing the shock hair colour change when residents showered.

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Snake-Stuntman

       Source: Getty Images

Liu Feinan, nicknamed as Snake King Asia, has made as name for himself by getting a snake to crawl into and through his mouth and out of his nose. Liu Feinan shows his stunt of snake crawling through his mouth and nose at China's Nanning Zoo.

(Source)

Astronomers have found 18 new alien planets,

NASA / JPL-Caltech

This artist's image shows a newly formed planet swimming

through the gas and dust surrounding the star.

Astronomers have found 18 new alien planets, all of them Jupiter-size gas giants that circle stars bigger than our sun, a new study reports.

The discoveries increase the number of known planets orbiting massive stars by 50 percent. The researchers surveyed about 300 stars using the Keck Observatory in Hawaii and instruments in Texas and Arizona. They focused on so-called "retired" type-A stars that are at least 1.5 times more massive than our own sun.

These stars are just beyond the main stage of life , hence the name "retired" and are now ballooning out to become what's known as subgiant stars.

The team scrutinized these stars, looking for slight wobbles caused by the gravitational tug of orbiting planets. This process revealed 18 new alien worlds, all of them with masses similar to Jupiter's. All 18 planets also orbit relatively far from their stars, at a distance of at least 0.7 times the span from Earth to the sun (about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers).

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A woman who lost the ability to smell, taste, see, and hear as a child was the first deaf-blind person to be fully educated

The woman was Laura Bridgman. Bridgman was born in 1829 and it is thought she had full use of all her senses at birth. However, at the age of two years old, she became sick with scarlet fever, due to which she lost her sight and hearing. It was later discovered, after she was educated, that she had lost or never had a sense of smell and she also had nearly no sense of taste.

The one sense she did have was touch. Amazingly, even with only this one sense and no real language, she was still pretty handy around the house as a child. She enjoyed mimicking actions demonstrated to her through touch, so her mother used this to teach her how to do certain household chores. She even learned to sew and knit.

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Second Paris built towards end of First World War to fool Germans

Photo: London news

A second Paris, complete with a Champs-Elysées and Gard Du Nord, was built towards the end of the First World War to fool German bombers.

According to archives unearthed by Le Figaro newspaper, military planners believed German pilots could be fooled into destroying the dummy city rather than the real one.

It was situated on the northern outskirts of Paris and featured sham streets lined with electric lights, replica buildings and even a copy of the Gare du Nord – the station from which high-speed trains now travel to and from London.

(Source)

Poland's Mysterious Crooked Forest

In a tiny corner of western Poland a forest of about 400 pine trees grow with a 90 degree bend at the base of their trunks - all bent northward. Surrounded by a larger forest of straight growing pine trees this collection of curved trees, or "Crooked Forest," is a mystery.

(Source)

Tigers never changed

The discovery of a skull of the oldest tiger ever found has indicated that the beasts never changed much in two million years except turning bigger in size.

The tiger skull, unearthed in Longdan region in northwestern China, is estimated to be between 2.16 and 2.55 million years old. It's the oldest complete skull ever discovered of a 'pantherine' big cat.

The skull is a little smaller than the head of today's tigers, about the size of a jaguar, but it's very recognisable as the same species we know today.

The researchers, comparing the skull, observed that it has given indication that tigers may have originally evolved in China.

The skull had well-developed upper fangs, and appears to be of a male. It pre-dates all other known tiger fossils by nearly half a million years.

The researchers compared the skull with 207 other tiger skulls, 66 jaguar skulls and 100 leopard skulls.

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421 coins and bolts in man's stomach

A man admitted to a hospital in India with severe stomach pain was found to have swallowed around 6 kg of iron objects, including hundreds of coins and fishnet pellets. Sonography and X-ray could not reveal more than an intestinal blockage and a few lumps in the stomach.

So doctors decided to conduct a surgery, and what they found left them baffled. Surgeons removed 421 coins, 197 fishnet pellets, three keys and 19 bolts of bicycle chain in a three-hour operation.

Doctors suspect Kuleshwar Singh, 28 is suffering from a psychological or an eating disorder. Doctors said the patient is either suffering from schizophrenia or a rare condition called pica, which creates an unusual desire to eat non-nutritional items,

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Earth-like planet Kepler 22-b

Nasa scientists have confirmed the existence of the an Earth-like planet outside our Solar System.

It's called Kepler 22-b and is circling a star similar to our Sun about 600 light years away.

The planet is about twice the size of Earth, with a temperature of around 22C.

That temperature is just right for liquid water something that's important to support life.

(Source)

Planet that's just like Earth

Scientists have discovered a planet which could have the most Earth-like environment ever found - raising a 'very compelling case' for life there.

Gliese 581g, located around 123trillion miles away, orbits a star at a distance that places it squarely in the habitable - or Goldilocks - zone, Nasa said.

The research, the product of more than a decade of observations at the WM Keck Observatory in Hawaii, suggests the planet could contain liquid water on its surface.

It means it tops the league of planets and moons rated as being most like Earth.

With our planet rated at 1.0 on the Earth Compatibility Index, Gliese 581g, found in the Libra constellation, scored 0.89, ahead of Mars on 0.7.

But U.S. experts believe Saturn's moon, Titan, is still the most likely so far to support life based on surface conditions and whether vital chemical reactions are possible.

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Is a pizza a vegetable?

Is a pizza a vegetable? In the federal school lunch program in US, the answer is yes. And Congress doesn't want that to change.

Pizza -- specifically, tomato paste used in the sauce -- is considered a vegetable under rules for school lunch programs that get federal dollars. Now, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) wants to slice how much each portion of tomato paste counts toward a serving of vegetables.

The USDA doesn't object to tomato paste counting toward some of the daily vegetable requirement for kids, but says schools rely far too heavily on the pizza -- a popular if nutritionally suspect offering in school cafeterias.

The food industry complains the USDA proposal devalues its products. Omaha, Neb.-based ConAgra Foods Inc., a company that provides pizzas to schools, said it opposes the USDA plan because it would "understate the amount of tomato products ... actually consumed."

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Husband up for sale on Craigslist

A Utah woman became so annoyed by her husband's addiction to video games that she put him up for sale on US small ads website Craigslist.

Kyle Baddley, 22, spent so much time playing the recently released "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3" that wife Alyse warned her mother-in-law, "I'm going to sell your son on Craigslist."

The 21-year-old soon made good on the threat, by posting a classified ad on her local version of the website.

"I am selling my 22 year old husband. He enjoys eating and playing video games all day. Easy to maintain, just feed and water every 3-5 hours," her post on the Logan, Utah, Craigslist site read.

Kyle Baddley's future home "must have internet and space for gaming," the ad continues. "If acceptable replacement is offered will trade."

His wife said the ad was intended as a joke, but responses ranged from a man who offered himself in trade, claiming he preferred books to video games.

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Dog drives double decker bus

Koolie dog Woodley takes his master Richard McCormack's double decker bus for drive in Darwin in Northern Territory of Australia. The dog was sitting in the driver's seat with its paws on the steering wheel. He chased after the runaway bus, leapt through an open window and rammed on the handbrake.

It ran for a couple of hundred meters (yards), swerved across the road, went up on the footpath and was just about to run into a parked car when I stopped it.

His owner, Richard McCormack, 62, said, "He sits next to me when I'm driving and in the driver's seat when I'm not. The handbrake is on the dashboard and he's seen me release it many times.

(Source)

Baby dinosaurs nest found

Scientists have discovered a 70-million-year-old nest filled with the remains of baby protoceratops dinosaurs.

The nest of 15 juvenile Protoceratops andrewsi dinosaurs provides clues about the dinosaurs' early behaviour.

While large numbers of eggs have been associated with other dinosaurs, such as the meat-eating oviraptor or certain duck-billed hadrosaurs, finding multiple juveniles in the same dino nest is quite rare.

The scientists have analysed the dinosaur remains along with the nest, which measured about 70 centimetres in diameter and was round and bowl-shaped. All were found at Djadochta Formation, Tugrikinshire, Mongolia, where it's believed sand "rapidly overwhelmed and entombed" the youngsters while they were still alive.

The researchers conclude that the 15 dinosaurs all show juvenile characteristics. These include short snouts, proportionately large eyes, and an absence of adult characteristics, such as the prominent horns and large frills associated with adults of this species. At least 10 of the 15 fossil sets are complete.

The nest and its contents imply that protoceratops juveniles remained and grew in their nest during at least the early stages of postnatal development. The nest further implies that parental care was provided.

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Ears can read someone's mind

These ears are cutting-edge technology. They can read your brain waves and transmit how you're feeling through ear movements.

When you are relaxed or bored, the ears lie flat, when you are concentrating or focused they perk up, and even wiggle if you are amused.

The "Necomimi", which means "cat's ears" in Japanese, launched in May but are set to go on sale at the end of the year, and was picked by Time magazine as one of the year's 50 best inventions.

Iit has two brain-wave sensors that can detect and interpret what you are thinking, and show it through four different movements.

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Cremated ashes converted into gemstones

The cremated ashes of your loved one can be converted into beautiful gemstones as a memorial to their unique life. The most beautiful and timeless memorial available for honouring their unique life.

The World War II soldier hid in a cave for 28 years

Shōichi Yokoi was a Japanese sergeant in the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) during the Second World War. He was among the last three Japanese hold-outs to surrender after the end of hostilities in 1945.

In 1943, he was transferred to the 38th Regiment in the Mariana Islands. He arrived on Guam in February 1943. When American forces captured the island in the 1944 Battle of Guam, Yokoi went into hiding with ten other Japanese soldiers. He would remain in hiding until 1972. Seven of the original ten holdouts eventually moved away. Only three remained in the region. Later these last three separated, but they visited each other until about 1964, when Yokoi found his two friends dead, apparently of starvation. The last eight years he lived entirely alone.

Yokoi survived by hunting, primarily at night. He used native plants to make clothes, bedding, and storage implements, which he carefully hid in his cave.

On the evening of January 24, 1972, Yokoi was discovered in the jungle. He was found by two local men who were checking their shrimp traps along a small river on Talofofo.

(Source)

Irukandji jellyfish

Irukandji jellyfish are tiny and extremely venomous jellyfish that inhabit marine waters of Australia and which are able to fire their stingers into their victim, causing symptoms collectively known as Irukandji syndrome. Its size is roughly no larger than a cubic centimetre (1 cm³).

The average jellyfish has stingers only on its tentacles, but the Irukandji also has stingers on its bell. Irukandji jellyfish differ from other box jellyfish species in that they have the ability to fire stingers from the tips and inject venom.

Irukandji syndrome is produced by a small amount of venom and includes severe pains at various parts of the body (typically excruciating muscle cramps in the arms and legs, severe pain in the back and kidneys, a burning sensation of the skin and face), headaches, nausea, restlessness, sweating, vomiting, an increase in heart rate and blood pressure, and psychological phenomena such as the feeling of impending doom. . If left untreated, this syndrome may cause the victim to go into cardia arrest and die within 20 minutes!

(Source)

Amazing Kangaroo Facts

Baby kangaroos, also called joeys, spend their first several months attached to a teat inside their mother’s pouch. After it leaves the pouch, it typical will continue to drink its mother’s milk until it is over a year old.

Kangaroos mate again as soon after a joey is borne, but the development of the second embryo stops, or rather, is paused after a few days. So in a way kangaroos are permanently pregnant. If a joey is lost, or if one has grown up and left the pouch, they can immediately give birth again.

After a joey has left the pouch, kangaroos give birth again. One of their teats will continue to produce high carbohydrate milk for the older joey. The new baby will attach itself to another teat that produces a different kind of milk with a higher fat content.

A female kangaroo can have three babies at the same time: an older joey living outside the pouch but still drinking milk, a young one in the pouch attached to a teat, and an embryo awaiting birth.

More facts about kangaroos!

A planet with two suns

The existence of a world with a double sunset, as portrayed in the film Star Wars more than 30 years ago, is now scientific fact. NASA's Kepler mission has made the first unambiguous detection of a circumbinary planet, a planet orbiting two stars -- 200 light-years from Earth.

The planet is cold, gaseous and not thought to harbor life, but its discovery demonstrates the diversity of planets in our galaxy. Previous research has hinted at the existence of circumbinary planets, but clear confirmation proved elusive. Kepler detected such a planet, known as Kepler-16b, by observing transits, where the brightness of a parent star dims from the planet crossing in front of it.

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Panasonic's "Evolta" swim robot

Panasonic's "Evolta" bike robot, powered by the company's Evolta rechargable batteries, is demonstrated during a news conference in Tokyo September 15, 2011. The company said three types of Evolta robots, developed to swim, bike and run, will challenge to complete an Ironman triathlon course in Hawaii, a total of about 230 km, within one week or 168 hours from October 24, 2011, powered by three AA-size rechargeable Evolta batteries.

(Source)

Woman with the longest fingernails

Chris Walton has been working on her fingernails for 18 years. And it's finally paying off.

Guinness World Records named Walton the woman with the longest fingernails on Wednesday, introducing "The Dutchess" and her nails at an event in New York City. Walton's nails measure 10-feet-2-inches on her left hand and 9-feet-7-inches on her right hand. She said she does her own nails and makeup and does household chores even though her nails twist and turn.

The previous record holder for longest nails was Lee Redmond of Salt Lake City, according to the Guinness World Records website. Redmond's nails measured a total 28 feet in 2008 but she lost her nails in a car crash the following year, the site said.

(Source)

No more cigarettes for smoking Malaysian orangutan

A captive orangutan often spotted smoking cigarettes given to her by zoo visitors is being forced to kick the habit.

Government authorities seized the adult ape named Shirley from a state-run zoo in Malaysia's southern Johor state last week after she and several other animals there were deemed to be living in poor conditions.

Shirley is now being quarantined at another zoo in a neighbouring state and is expected to be sent to a Malaysian wildlife center on Borneo Island within weeks.

Shirley is not being provided with any more cigarettes because smoking is not normal behaviour for orangutans. She is not addicted, but she might have formed a habit after mimicking human beings who were smoking around her.

Complete news.

Eating chocolate linked to reduced heart disease risk

Researchers have found that higher levels of chocolate consumption have been associated with a 37% reduction in the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, 31% reduction in diabetes and a 29% reduction for stroke.

Scientists at the University of Cambridge in the UK analyzed the results of seven studies involving more than 114,000 participants. The studies looked at consumption of dark and milk chocolate and included chocolate bars, chocolate drinks and chocolate snacks.

Previous research has shown that cocoa and cacao products appear to have a positive antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effect on heart health. The Cambridge analysis found a significant association between increased consumption of these products and reduced risk for any cardiovascular disease, stroke and diabetes.

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World’s largest living crocodile

A giant saltwater crocodile weighing more than a tonne has been captured in a remote southern Philippine village following a series of attacks on humans and animals.

It is believed responsible for eating at least one fisherman, but this monster crocodile has finally been caught by 100 very cautious men.

Measuring 21ft from snout to tail, the massive creature is the largest crocodile captured alive in recent years.

The beast was caught, after a three-week hunt, in a creek in the Philippines by villagers who had lived in fear of it for more than 20 years.

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Oldest woolly rhino discovered

A woolly rhino fossil dug up on the Tibetan Plateau is believed to be the oldest specimen of its kind yet found.

The creature lived some 3.6 million years ago - long before similar beasts roamed northern Asia and Europe in the ice ages that gripped those regions.

The discovery team says the existence of this ancient rhino supports the idea that the frosty Tibetan foothills of the Himalayas were the evolutionary cradle for these later animals.

The rhino was found in Tibet's Zanda Basin. The area is rich in fossil beds, and this specimen was unearthed along with examples of extinct horse, antelope, snow leopard, badger and many other kinds of mammals.

It has been put in a new species classification - Coelodonta thibetana.

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Fish found inside duck egg

In 2006, the group found the duck egg in a small pond on a field trip to the French Alps and noticed something moving inside it. When they cracked open the shell, three live minnows were inside. There were no cracks in the egg.

Biologists suggest that the egg must have fallen into minnow-populated water, but there’s still no telling how the fish could have gotten in there.

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World's most accurate clock

An atomic clock at the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) has the best long-term accuracy of any in the world, research has found.

The clock would lose or gain less than a second in some 138 million years.

The UK is among the handful of nations providing a "standard second" that keeps the world on time.

However, the international race for higher accuracy is always on, meaning the record may not stand for long.

The NPL's CsF2 clock is a "caesium fountain" atomic clock, in which the "ticking" is provided by the measurement of the energy required to change a property of caesium atoms known as "spin".

By international definition, it is the electromagnetic waves required to accomplish this "spin flip" that are measured; when 9,192,631,770 peaks and troughs of these waves go by, one standard second passes.

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Underground river discovered beneath the Amazon

Covering more than 7 million square kilometers in South America, the Amazon basin is one of the biggest and most impressive river systems in the world.

Brazilian scientists have found a new river in the Amazon basin – around 4km underneath the Amazon river. The Rio Hamza, named after the head of the team of researchers who found the groundwater flow, appears to be as long as the Amazon river but up to hundreds of times wider.

Both the Amazon and Hamza flow from west to east and are around the same length, at 6,000km. But whereas the Amazon ranges from 1km to 100km in width, the Hamza ranges from 200km to 400km.

The underground river starts in the Acre region under the Andes and flows through the Solimões, Amazonas and Marajó basins before opening out directly into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

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Planet made of diamond

Astronomers have spotted an exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard.

The new planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.

The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon -- i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun.

Lying 4,000 light years away, or around an eighth of the way toward the center of the Milky Way from the Earth, the planet is probably the remnant of a once-massive star that has lost its outer layers to the so-called pulsar star it orbits.

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God particles could be found by Dec 2012

The mystery surrounding the origin of the universe could be unravelled by the end of 2012. By then, it should be clear if it was indeed the Big Bang that had triggered it and whether Higgs particles - the first matter to be generated - exist at all, according to Rolf-Dieter Heuer, director general of The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland who delivered a lecture at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP) on Friday.

It's possible that the Higgs particles, which will conclusively prove the Big Bang theory, have already been generated at the Large Hedron Collider (LHC) at CERN which is hosting the experiment, said Heuer. But they were yet to be identified through detectors in the 27-km-long underground tunnel where scores of Indian scientists have been working for the last two years, ever since the experiment started. "If it isn't detected, then we shall have to revise the standard model that has always pointed at the Big Bang. It will be a huge discovery as well, for then, we shall have to exclude Big Bang and explore other theories. So, we are keeping our fingers crossed," said Heuer.

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Bulletproof human skin

Bulletproof vests have been around for decades but skin that can stop them has only been the preserve of science fiction.

Now, scientists have claimed to be making this science fiction into a reality with the development of bulletproof human skin made from spider silk and goat milk.

They genetically engineered goats to produce milk, which is packed with the same protein as silk spiders, which is then milked out and spun and weaved into a material that is ten times stronger than steel.

The fabric is then blended with human skin to make what the scientists hope will be tough enough to stop even a bullet.

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Fossil find shows Martian life possible

Earliest life Earth's oldest fossils have been found in Australia and researchers say their microscopic discovery is convincing evidence that cells and bacteria were able to thrive in an oxygen-free world more than 3.4 billion years ago.

The finding suggests early life was sulphur-based, living off and metabolising sulphur rather than oxygen for energy, and supports the idea that similar life forms could exist on other planets where oxygen levels are low or non-existent.

Could these sorts of things exist on Mars? It's just about conceivable. This evidence is certainly encouraging and lack of oxygen on Mars is not a problem.

The microfossils, which the researchers say are very clearly preserved and show precise cell-like structures, were found in a remote part of Western Australia called Strelley Pool.

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Schoolgirl may die if she combs her hair

A schoolgirl in Scotland has a rare condition following which she has been asked not to comb her hair too vigorously as it could lead to her brain shutting down.

Megan Stewart, 13, has a rare condition - Hair Brushing Syndrome. It means she must avoid wearing polyester or touching balloons. Any contact with electrical charges could confuse her brain into switching itself off or sending signals to her heart and lungs to make them do so.

Stewart has to dampen her hair to reduce static and lie down before combing it and is banned from participating in school science experiments.

The teenager, from Wishaw, Lanarkshire, Scotland was diagnosed three years ago, after she collapsed as her mother -Sharon brushed her hair.

Her mother Stewart, 41, said: 'I was brushing her hair when she flopped over and her lips turned blue. I thought she was having a fit, so we called the paramedics. It was really scary.'

The girl was taken to a hospital where medics revived her. It was two months later that neurologists made the diagnosis.

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